Make Your Hair Color Last Twice As Long

Stylist-approved tips, tricks and the miracle products that extend your hair color by at least two weeks

Avoid This No-No Ingredient How long should you wait after coloring to wash your hair? The short answer: as long as you can stand it. The longer you wait, the longer the color has a chance to settle in (I held out for four days without washing after getting a red glaze, which may have been a little extreme, but I promise there was a good reason.)

Shampooing, especially with hot water, relaxes the hair, which allows the color molecules to escape more easily. You'll lose some color each time you shampoo, so Papanikolas advises that at a minimum, "wait one to two days after color to shampoo for the color molecules to fully stabilize." When you finally do shampoo, use a gentle, color-safe formula, and try to keep the water cool or lukewarm.

"Gentle" means staying away from shampoos with sulfates (commonly listed as sodium laureth sulfate and ammonium laureth sulfate toward the top of the ingredient list). Sulfates make your shampoo foamy, but they also strip the color molecules from your hair. Instead, use a shampoo and conditioner like L'Oreal Professionnel INOAColor Care, $27 or Redken's Color Extend Magnetics, $18, to help lock in color. New technology like Redken's Interlock Protein Network (IPN) strengthens the hair fiber while amino-ions help seal in color molecules. Papanikolas also suggests avoiding clarifying or volumizing shampoos because they can also strip and fade color.